November 16, 2008
Stupid Nonprofit Ads?
“Some nonprofits just shouldn’t be allowed to have ad budgets,” writes Jeff Brooks, on his Donor Power Blog.
Mr. Brooks, creative director at a marketing firm serves nonprofit groups, takes issue with that he calls “two more stupid nonprofit ads.”
His first target is a pair of print ads for Goodwill Industries, the social-services charity know for its thrift stores. One ad reads: “Dear Sarah Palin, We eagerly await your $150,000 clothing donation on Nov. 5. Thanks in advance.”
It refers to the pricey wardrobe the Republican vice presidential candidate was provided during the campaign (and the bit of controversy the shopping spree stirred up.) Campaign officials have said the clothing is to be donated to charity.
In a companion ad, the charity directed a request at Barack Obama. It says, in a nutshell, that the charity would “appreciate” it he were to donate any of his “$1,500 suits.”
“It’s the lame attempt to be ‘balanced’ by bringing up Obama’s $1,500 suits that lands this ad squarely in the ‘stupid’ category’” Mr. Brooks writes. “Whenever did Mr. Obama’s suits ever become part of the conversation?”
He concludes that, in an attempt to appear nonpartisan, the charity came off as “incoherent” and “mean-spirited.”
His other “stupid” ad campaign is happening in London, where the British Humanist Society has been plastering London buses with placards reading: “There probably is no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” (The American Humanist Association has begun placing similar ads on buses in Washington.)
Mr. Brooks says that the campaign doesn’t fuel thought about the heady issues involved: god, man, and morality.
“This is more like an adolescent attempt to be shocking and cynical and offending old ladies,” Mr. Brooks writes.
What are your thoughts on these ad campaigns? Click on the comments link to share your views.
Foundations Urged to Provide More Data on Grants to Minority Groups
In a continuing war of words, the Greenlining Institute shot back at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page for its November 5 opinion article that criticized the Berkeley, Calif., organization’s efforts to make foundations provide data on the race and ethnicity of their beneficiaries.
“Many members of the heavily tax-subsidized foundation world often act like irresponsible hedge funds or subprime investment houses with exorbitant salaries, high-end retreats, and lavish offices. All of this is subsidized by the taxpayer,” writes Greenlining’s incoming executive director, Orson Aguilar in a letter to the editor. The letter was also signed by Len Canty, chairman of the Black Economic Council, in Oakland, Calif.
The letter says that the Journal’s view is inconsistent with its call for financial institutions to be more open to the public.
“Your attack on the Greenlining Institute — an organization representing the aspirations of 110 million minorities — for ‘shaking down’ foundations is misplaced. All we have requested is that foundations award a far larger percentage of their philanthropic dollars to the people who live on Main Street rather than to pet causes that serve the wealthy and elite. As a small part of this effort, we have urged foundations to provide the same race and ethnic data that many Fortune 500 companies regularly share with the public,” write Mr. Aguilar and Mr. Canty.
The Philanthropy Roundtable held a debate about Greenlining’s goals during its recent conference.
Read The Chronicle’s article about members of Congress who share some of Greenlining’s concerns.
What do you think? Do you agree with Greenlining or with the newspaper editorial? Click on the comment link below this post to share your thoughts.
November 13, 2008
New Web Site Aims to Help Charities Craft News Releases
Charities seeking help to improve their news releases now have a new resource at their fingertips thanks to a new Web site created by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, in Miami.
The Knight News Release Workshop offers step-by-step instructions that show nonprofit writers how, and how not to, craft an effective release.
Marc Fest, vice president for communications at the Knight Foundation says the site evolved out the foundation’s work with its grantees.
“Collaborating with grantees on news releases is one of the things we do, and we noticed some basic opportunities to help them,” he says. “So we realized, why not offer it all in one place?”
The site, which allows users to leave online comments to post their own ideas, includes examples of well and poorly written headlines as well as tips on using good quotes. Among pitfalls highlighted to avoid, the workshop discourages writers from the use of jargon and offers a checklist and other tools to guide the drafting and editing process from beginning to end.
“There is an increasing need to communicate clearly about what nonprofits do,” says Mr. Fest. “Many people in the public don’t understand all the good work they do, so to communicate about that good work in clear and concise language is more important now than ever.”
(To learn more about the reasons charity executives should avoid jargon see Putting Clarity in Charity, an article from The Chronicle’s archive.)
Are Volunteers Useless?
How much of an impact do volunteers have on charities’ programs? Not much, writes Holden Karnofsky, on the GiveWell blog.
In fact, Mr. Karnofsky says that volunteers generally cost a charity more time to manage than the value they add to an organization.
“I’ve generally found that adding a new person into a work process nearly always costs a lot of time, especially up front, for training and managing,” he says.
He says that training volunteers can be worthwhile, however, if the volunteers put in enough time to eventually overcome the cost of their training, or if their projects are very well-defined.
The real value of volunteerism for most charities, says Mr. Karnofsky, is that it provides a way to get potential donors more engaged with the organization.
What do you think? Click on the comments link below to share your thoughts.
Does the Gates Foundation Have Too Much Influence on U.S. Education?
As part of an announcement this week about changes in its education grant making, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is making efforts to be more open about its decisions.
On Tuesday, the foundation said it is revamping its approach to improving education. It gathered education leaders in Seattle to get candid feedback about its approach, plans to hold similar forums in other parts of the country, added material to its Web site, and has even established an e-mail address so participants can offer their ideas and criticisms in the future.
But despite these moves to make itself accessible to the public, some blog writers are concerned that the wealthy philanthropy influences Americans schools without much oversight.
Alexander Russo, a former education adviser to two U.S. senators, writes on his blog that the new effort, which includes a project to develop standards for public schools nationwide, concerns him. “I support national standards and tests, and I’m as impatient as everyone else. But Gates-made national standards creep me out a little bit,” he says.
A blog writer identified as skoolboy writes on an Education Week blog, “I’m delighted that the Gates Foundation has realized that throwing money at small schools didn’t work, but I’m not prepared to turn over the public’s interest in what is to be taught and learned to a private philanthropy, no matter how civic-minded it may be.”
But Robert Pondoiscio, director of communications for Core Knowledge, a nonprofit group that advocates for a standard curriculum for kindergarten through eighth grade, defends Gates’s involvement.
“Perhaps I’m missing something, but industry lobbyists regularly play a role in policy and legislation where they have enormous self-interest with nary a peep. If it’s ok for the insurance industry to write health-care legislation or the oil industry to craft energy policy, how could weighing in on national standards and assessments possibly be out of bounds for Gates, which has no dog in the fight outside of its reputational capital?” asks on on the charity’s Core Knowledge Blog.
What do you think? Are you concerned about the Gates Foundation’s influence in American education?
Click on the comment link below this post to share your thoughts.
Defending Marketing Budgets in Tough Times
In these rough economic times, many nonprofit groups are looking to cut costs wherever and however they can. But Nancy Schwartz, a nonprofit marketing consultant, urges charities to spare their marketing budgets from deep reductions.
“When a nonprofit cuts marketing, it severs one of the hands that feed it,” she writes on her Getting Attention blog. “Nothing’s more important now than ensuring that your organization’s leaders get that cutting marketing back now is a bad move.”
Ms. Schwartz argues that marketing is a chief provider of a charity’s lifeblood— donors and volunteers—and this is true in good times and bad.
She advises nonprofit officials in charge of marketing to avoid getting defensive and instead make suggestions about ways to spend money more efficiently and productively. For example, a marketing official might promise to increase revenue over a designated period of time if budgets are left alone. Since “showing your case is always more effective than telling it,” she says, effectively tracking results are more important than ever.
“Arm yourself with as many hard stats and success stories as you can,” Ms. Schwartz writes. “Talk about what colleague and competitive organizations are doing, and what you’ll lose if your organization retreats now.”
Should charity marketing and communications be spared cost cutting, or should they be asked to scale back along all the other departments when the economy heads south? Share your thoughts by clicking on the comments link below this post.
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D.C. Art Institutions Face Problems
Broad challenges confront the arts world in the nation’s capital, the art critic Tyler Green writes on his blog, Modern Art Notes.
Among his concerns: poor leadership at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the lack of expansion at the National Gallery of Art, and the vacancy in the director’s office of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Mr. Green is posting several blog entries this week suggesting improvements that can be made at several capital-city institutions.
In his post about the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Mr. Green says the museum needs “radical” changes, and one of his two suggestions — sure to raise eyebrows — is to close the institution.
How do the struggles Washington institutions face compare with those in other cities? What do you think of Mr. Green’s observations and suggestions?
Chinese Philanthropy Continues to Grow
China continues to show signs of a growing embrace of philanthropy.
According to Paul French, Asia Pacific editor at Ethical Corporation magazine, the Sichuan earthquake in May triggered in outpouring of generosity that the government wants to harness to improve social welfare in the country.
He writes that Zheng Yuanchang, director of the government office that oversees charitable activities, says that “China now has, for the first time, ‘a favorable social environment for the development of the country’s philanthropy sector.’”
Such interest has led to philanthropy conferences in China. For example, former president Bill Clinton will hold an event for donors in Hong Kong next month. And last week, the first China Global Philanthropy Forum met in Beijing.
One of the forum’s participants, Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, writes on his blog, Ken’s Commentary, that a number of people working in China showed interest in his nonprofit watchdog’s efforts to evaluate charities.
“I have no idea if we will be doing any work in Asia; that is not my point here. Rather, it is the universal nature of our message and the need for our services worldwide,” he writes.
Despite the interest in philanthropy, a confusing tax system, government hostility toward human-rights groups, and cultural barriers are obstacles to charity work there, according to a Chronicle report on China.
(A short-term pass or subscription is required to read The Chronicle article.)
What do you think? What does China need to increase philanthropy?
November 12, 2008
Does the Financial Meltdown Vindicate Harvard's Efforts to Build Its Endowment?
Harvard University’s mammoth endowment — which at one point totaled $36.9-billion — has, in the past few years, drawn scrutiny from members of Congress and others who said the institution should be spending more on its students.
But Jack Siegel, writing at Charity Governance, says that amid the current economic meltdown, Harvard’s decision “to accumulate for a rainy day begins to look like the prudent exercise of judgment that it has always been.”
According to The Boston Globe, Harvard may have lost as much of a third of its endowment and is now planning to reduce spending. A freeze on wages is reportedly being considered.
Mr. Siegel says he hopes that Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee who has raised questions about Harvard’s large endowment, “will remember this downturn in the economy.”
“A deep pocket is a good thing in hard times,” says Mr. Siegel. He writes that nonprofit groups should watch legislators such as Mr. Grassley, who may try to seek additional revenue from nonprofit groups as the federal budget deficit continues to mount.
But other observers may see the actions of Harvard and other Ivy League institutions in a less favorable light than Mr. Siegel. In response a Chronicle of Higher Education article about announcements by Brown and Cornell Universities that they would impose hiring freezes because of their shrinking assets, a reader named Bill wrote that the “purpose of an endowment” is “to get you through the tough times.
“When you sit on $6-billion, it seems to me that you could use some of it to make up for the revenue that’s lost,” he wrote. “But no .. the most important thing to virtually every college president is the size of the endowment.”
How do you see the financial crisis changing calculations about charities’ endowments? Does Harvard seem wise, as Mr. Siegel says? Or is the university wrong to propose cuts, given it still has a large endowment?
Donors Want Results From Nonprofit Groups
For nonprofit groups and their donors, passion is out and standards and accountability are in.
“A lot of people aren’t looking to donate to some ‘mom and pop’ charity that’s operating on a prayer and hope… they want to donate to well-run, legitimate organizations,” writes Lindsey McDougle, a third year Ph.D. student at the University of San Diego pursuing a doctoral degree specializing in Nonprofit and Philanthropic Studies, on her blog Leadership as a Field of Study.
Donors, she continues “want to know that the dollars they invest into a nonprofit organization will go to the purposes for which the funds were solicited. They want to know that organizational policies, structures, and standards are in place, and that the organization to which they are donating is legitimately operating in an efficient manner.”
Have you seen this change happening at your nonprofit group? If so, how have you responded?